


Let's sit a little longer

by promisespromises



Category: Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25883758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/promisespromises/pseuds/promisespromises
Summary: The night before his battle against the khan, Jin wants to make sure Yuna knows how he feels.
Relationships: Jin Sakai/Yuna
Comments: 19
Kudos: 96





	Let's sit a little longer

**Author's Note:**

> The last conversation between Jin and Yuna at Jogaku Temple ends with "Let's sit a little longer" and then fades to black. It felt like the game devs were inviting us to fill in the blank, and I could not resist!

“You should get some rest,” Yuna said, and started to turn away. 

But Jin wasn’t ready to say goodnight. “Not yet,” he said. “Let’s… sit… a little longer.”

Yuna was always the last person he spoke to when he came to Jogaku Temple, or to whatever camp in which his friends and allies were holed up. She was last so he could linger as long as possible. As long as she would let him. It was never enough.

He lowered himself to the ground and sat next to her, as he had done countless times before. It was a cold night this far north, but for once, he barely felt it. Even so, he added another log to the fire. Let her see that. Let her see that he hoped she would stay talking to him until the whole thing had burned down to embers.

Samurai were supposed to be patient and in control of their emotions. His uncle had been saying that to him since he was a child. And yet with Yuna, he was neither.

At first he’d confused his feelings for her as gratitude. She’d saved his life, and by doing so, saved Lord Shimura. She’d opened his eyes to the limitations of the samurai code and even given him the name by which his people now knew him. The Ghost owed her everything.

But gratitude had merely been the spark. What he felt now was better described as a blaze.

“You say you’re not ready for sleep, and then you sit there like a lump,” Yuna teased. Her words might sound harsh to others, but Jin knew her now. He could feel the gentle nudge, the opening if he wished to take it. The easy parry if he did not.

He knew his feelings were not one-sided. He saw how she stepped closer to him when she spoke. How she leaned in. How she paused before speaking, as if she were afraid she might say too much. He did the same things himself.

And yet, he needed to say the words. He needed to show her he was brave enough for that.

“Yuna,…” he began, and the words faded before they became anything. The legendary Ghost, brought down by simple conversation. He stopped. Took a breath. Tried again. “I… meant what I said before we took Lord Shimura’s castle.”

“That you would die for your people,” she said, echoing his words that night. But not the _right_ words.

“That I would die for _you_.” He spoke with great care and precision. As if they were the final stroke of a duel, instead of the opening move of something else entirely.

Yuna stared at the fire. He watched her, as he had always done. He knew the slope of her nose and the scar on her cheek better than he knew anything, save perhaps the weight of his own sword in his hand. She was thinking, and he would give her as much time as she needed.

He would give her anything she asked for, in fact.

“I don’t want you to die for me,” she said quietly. Then she looked at him, _into_ him, as she had always done. “Why is it always about death? Isn’t there something we could do that involved living instead?”

The Ghost lived to free his people, but as Jin Sakai, lately he found joy in only three things: the wind at his back, the soft petals of flowers on his fingertips as he rode his horse through the countryside, and conversations with a thief. With _this_ thief in particular.

“Speaking with you always makes me feel alive,” he said.

Yuna raised an eyebrow. “And you want nothing more?”

Jin wondered if it was not merely a question, but an offer. He would not let the moment pass. If they’d been standing, he would have taken another step towards her. Since they were sitting, he leaned forward, ignoring the heat of the fire on his chin.

“Nothing more? Yuna, I want everything,” he said. He looked down at her hand and imagined taking it in his own. Imagined pressing her bare palm to his lips. Instead, Jin pulled his gaze to her face, lingering only a heartbeat too long on her mouth before once again finding her eyes. “Everything,” he said again, and it was almost a whisper.

But she heard him. She heard his one simple word, and with it, the flood of words perpetually unspoken. Her eyes widened in surprise. Had she been firing an arrow in that moment, it would have flown wide. And Yuna — _his_ Yuna — never, ever missed.

He waited in that endless liminal moment, waited for her to decide. He had stepped into the unknown, hoping she would follow. He would not blame her if she refused. The courtyard around them faded to nothing, its bustle and buzz inconsequential. If anyone watched the Ghost, the Ghost was currently unaware. Jin was alone with Yuna, waiting to see what she would do with the whole heart placed in her hands.

“Jin,” she said softly, and in her voice his name was a golden bird. “You already have everything. You’ve had it for a while now.”

A stiff breeze blew through the courtyard. The wind had always looked out for Jin, ever since his father died. It swirled around them both like a cloak, like a ribbon, tying them together.

Jin couldn’t speak. Not yet. He could barely even breathe. It was wrong to feel this much joy on the eve of war. It was wrong, and yet, here he was, basking in that joy as he basked in a setting sun.

No, in a _rising_ sun. For this was not the end of something, but the beginning.

Oh, he would be unstoppable tomorrow. He would be the golden Ghost, lit from within.

“I will not disappoint you tomorrow, Yuna,” he said.

“The only way you could ever disappoint me, Jin, is to die,” she said.

“Then I will not,” Jin promised. He stared at her familiar face, at her hair, at the quirk of her eyebrow. “The Khan has never before fought a man with so much to live for.”

#

Much later, when Jin eventually dragged himself to bed, he dreamed not of Mongols or the Khan, but of two horses and their riders cantering easily through the trees in the dappled light of morning. In all his days, he had never slept so well.


End file.
